Customer Reviews

Pro Apache (Expert's Voice)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In this voluminous title author Peter Wainwright covers the Apache web server in detail. Chapters include Installing Apache and basic configuration, building Apache the way you want it, configuring Apache the way you want it, deciding what the client needs, delivering dynamic content, hosting more than one web site, improving Apache's performance, monitoring Apache, Securing Apache, Improving Web Server Security, and Extending Apache. It has some excellent sections on advanced configuration, handling robots, dealing with errors and handling them correctly, name-based and IP-based virtual servers, and improving the performance of your server. The section on securing Apache covers authentication (including digest and LDAP) and using SSL (including some advanced configuration techniques).

There are better books that deal with some of the specific areas of this text (for example, Hardening Apache is much more thorough on the subject of securing your server) but you won't find a more comprehensive text in a single volume than this one. Pro Apache, Third Edition is highly recommended and my first choice for anyone looking for a single book to learn how to setup and configure an Apache server or serve as their primary reference.

Why a third edition? Wainright's first edition was well received and Apache was improved after the edition was published. So he produced a second edition. Guess what? The open source Apache has continued to accrue infalling upgrades. As Wainright explains, there are now two main versions, 1.3 and 2. Apache 1.3 is essentially the direct descendent of earlier versions. Very stable on unix/linux, on which it was originally developed.

But the key thing about this new book is its descriptions of Apache 2. Apache 1.3 had inferior performance on Microsoft computers, when it was ported. Some people got fed up with this state of affairs and recast crucial portions, to produce Apache 2, which now directly uses native MS threads. It has much better performance than 1.3, on MS computers.

The book goes into this in fuller detail. Plus it has the usual voluminous descriptions of what you can tweak for most web server needs. Luckily, if you want to deploy or use a vanilla configuration, the early chapters should suffice. Then consult the later text for more specialised needs.

If you are already running Apache 1.3 on a unix/linux computer, it seems from this book that there is little incentive to migrate to 2. Relatively little to gain.

This is by far the best standalone book on Apache I've seen. It really is a very good reference for professional web server admins, as well as developers and others, who need help in managing Apache web servers. It's well-written too, something that is becoming increasingly rare in the technical book area.

This is a bit of a cheek! This is not a Kindle book at all. It is a scanned book with a half-bad attempt at a digit table of contents. Cannot search, cannot reference. Material is also outdated. It is not a Apache2 book. It is an Apache 1.3 book with some references to 2.0

Overall a disappointment in buying it :-(

I own and have read numerous Apache books over the last seven years. I believe this publication to be the best reference book for the workplace.

O'Reilly books are definitely well written; however, I find myself ALWAYS going to this book first, even though it was published in 2004. The Apache Directives, topics, and examples covered are timeless. It puts side-by-side code base 1.3 and 2.0, with strength of focus on the 2.0 code base. If you use the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) online documentation along with this book, then you will be able to perform in the workplace. Nearly everything covered in this book is relevant today and even translates to the 2.2 code base.

I can't wait for the next revision to cover the 2.2 code base in depth. Unfortunately, publications can't keep up with ASF releases and the new and re-factored modules. It takes about two years for a solid book to be put into circulation after ASF makes a major release available.

Well done Peter!

This book contains some meaningful information but is largely obsolete.

Some fairly informative chapters contain introduction to common configuration, authentication, configuring SSL, using WebDAV and subversion.

But lot of space in the book is wasted on topics that were cool in the last century like compiling apache and compiling single modules, but not relevant anymore. Today you are likely not going to recompile you server every week, but you SHOULD install security patches every week, if you take your job seriously. IMHO there is only one possibility - to rely on the services of your linux distribution.

By the way, Debian and derived distributions also do a great job combating the mess in the httpd.conf by meaningfully dividing it in multiple configuration files, so you have a good place to put your specific settings making an automated upgrade to the newer apache version easy. So do not listen to the author, never edit your httpd.conf. ;-)

The author describes in detail topics, that are not relevant anymore in the web application development (assumed that you are creating an application, that goes besides "hello world"). Delivering dynamic content (chapter 6) used to be server-side includes and cgi but it is NOT anymore because of poor programming model and poor performance.

Typical scenario nowadays is to use apache as a front end web server, letting apache serve the static content like pictures and providing a wrapper or proxy to a high performance application server (for example mongrel if you using rails) or using mod_python for python or using zope etc. In this context I would wish elaborative description on mod_rewrite, that is pretty complicated.

My conclusion: if you are beginner, search for a better introductory book. If you are advanced developer/admin/hacker, then use primary resources like [....]

I bought this book because I need to set up a data repository using a WebDAV server. The first couple of chapters were very useful in telling me what modules I needed and how I could configure Apache to allow a secure repository for several groups of researchers.

Like ALMOST everything I have purchased from this publisher, this is a competent and useful resource on the topic.

The book is very well written it has helped to go through with the apache server i will recomended it to manyone who is interested in these kind of books. Very explicitly described the content of the book.An excellent purchase